Perched upon a corporate throne,

We march into the great unknown

As wasted words of gossip drone

And steel replaces brick and stone.
Soon you find yourself alone

In crowded streets with a global phone,

Doing a random strangers bidding.



A means to an end they say,

As poor men die while rich men play,

When honest work brings modest pay,

And doesn't last 'em through the day

Though profiteers in moral grey 

Flood the airwaves to in turn say,

"Our wealth simply paves  the way,

Tomorrow is your salvation day,

You want peace? Then war is only fitting."



Look and you will see

Money buys democracy,

The Citizens United, see?

If we knew the truth, would we agree?

Those answers are not  going to be

Yes or no but more likely

Maybe, perhaps, or possibly,

Because in reality,

Right and wrong are just kidding.



To those who fret the plagues we face,
Yet believe we can change this place,
Who stifle doubts about the Human Race,
And yearn to be together in this chase,
With subdued pride and envy, in every case,

Seeking common goals to found the base,

May we lay the evil plots to waste,

For evils clients who once stood are now sitting.



The time is now, make a stand
,
Pull our heads out of the sand

Call their bluff with a hidden hand

Of virtue they don’t quite understand,
Defy procedure’s they have planned
,
Unite across the lines that brand,

Refuse all prejudice, none may be accepted.



Some know for they already looked

And the flow of money keeps them booked,

Takes but once to have them hooked,

Setting the table with food uncooked

For others whose foundations shook

Are pitted against the small time crook

Hoping only that we be protected

.

Hark the sounds of rebellious cries

For those that call, they realize

All that lives sure enough dies
But when displeased we close our eyes

To the masters of disguise

Who think their profit justifies

The invisible hand growing in size

While their strings attached go uncorrected



They kept us quiet all the while

Waiting with numbers dialed

To put the innocent to trial

Lining up in single file

To be cast into the same old pile

None willing to lay down their tile,

Casting shadows upon their guile,

The double agent mercantile,

Lobbying candidates to endorse.



All I ask, is to what do we base belief?

Dying children get no relief

Oil poisons the coral reef

Prophecy of the fallen chief

Given a thought but a bit too brief
Together a tree, alone but a leaf
Although it is all who feel the grief

Of our actions consequential course



Corrupted elites discuss our goals

So we continue to dig our holes

To depths that darken souls

Rigging markets to decide our roles

Assumptions made so that greed controls

They draw their graphs till the pencil dulls

Then add a factor, see how that goes

Without even the slightest feeling of remorse



Growth is sacred, but is it moral?

Strengthen reason yet we quarrel

Over falsities of ***** oral

Arrangements like that of floral

Remedies but not doctoral

Blood of fallen lives pastoral

Remind that we’re all mortal

But all thereafter bear the force.



So please tell me at what cost?

In a moments past our objectives lost

Compassion was our hand now tossed

Lines we’ve drawn, lines we’ve crossed

How much dirt can be washed

From our conscience we exhaust

Before shattering glass of fate we sloshed?

Working from the scattered pieces back to the source



It is us who blindly lead the strut

We are the source and nothing but

Whose center point is one giant rut

Where false desires cracked and cut

And the selfish feed an endless gut,

When our culture begins to split and jut,

We might finally ask... It was all for what?

You are my  Sun,  my  Moon, and
all of my Stars.  You are my heart,
my life, my one and only thought.
.
Some  people search  their whole
life  to find  what  I found in  you.

I  am  not  perfect,  but  I love you. . .
I really do.

And I promise to be your best friend,
your partner in crime and your lover.
    
Forever.....      

My memory runs over and over and over
our  yesterday together  knowing the only
way I can ever go back is the way I did,...

into the fading thoughts of  an  old mind.  
  
Sad to me are those thoughts, thoughts of leaving
not knowing if I will ever return alive,
leaving the  faces of love,  the  places  and  friends,
the traces of sadness in their eyes, wondering if
they will ever see me alive again,

leaving for a war children were fighting to win
and leaving a thousand uncorrected wrongs and
a thousand sunsets.
                                                        ­                              Jon York   2020

Have you remembered yet? the knowing questions in the undergrounds of memories. Recall how glorious it is to yearn for remembering. Unknown ravens gauging the eyes of happiness which kneels in the yard of your remembering. Are you here or are you around the outskirts of your remembering. Are you knowing or are you a glimpse of your own remembering. Ugliness resides in the undefended hills of your remembering. Unapologetic ultrasonic hums open your remembering. Grief resolves uncharacteristically in our remembering. Unconscious thoughts rise uncorrected in your remembering.  Greet happiness uncontrolled by your remembering. Open your gut and unearth a capsule of understanding. Gasp in awe as you control yourself trying to remember. How am I here, around this hell? Graceless is my memory of how I am the way I am. Creature aside, away attempting to remember the hell they came from. Have you remembered yet? that creature that you are? Yearning to remember anywhere else, anywhere but the underground of memories, anywhere but the unmeasured mind of how we all are now. Rising heaps of unfiltered uses of your remembering reminds me of how I once was. Have you remembered yet? How I am? How you are? How we are just creatures with unresolved remembering.

You can leave wires alone, hidden away
and they still get tangled, ******* in knots,
twisted around in angry coils, like a pit-full
of leathery snakes.  Everything appears to work still fine

and it looks nice and shiny, like it always did.
Dusted off every week. Our visitors admire it,
and family don’t notice it anymore.
It’s part of the furniture, there every day;

useful and pleasurable though it is, in its way,
if it broke, it would be replaced. So why,
though untouched in anyway
are the wires in such a state?

So, moving the furniture, you try
and release them. You try and follow the trail,
from where they used to run straight and true,
to where they now entwine and choke

each other with their tiny knotted fists of flex.
And you think this is beyond the laws of physics,
That an inanimate object can come alive
With such malevolence.

You look for explanation, such as
spectral interference or evil black-eyed
midnight fairies with sharp pin-teeth,
who, in glinting moonlight, spin and prance,

Whirling the wires around, as if in some frenzied pagan dance.
Rather, though, (and you know) it’s the small
unseen twists of time that, uncorrected in neglect,
have snared the wires in their own catch net.

However did it come to this? I ask her,
and she looks at me, as if
I shouldn’t be surprised. For so
it happens every time.

Screams of the deranged
Into the night, full of fury
Black tipped roses arranged
Into a vase, ribbon laced
Medicated mind, controlled
Within the one to be used
Experimental abuse, skin cold
Sand slips down the time-keep

"Do it." whispers the black-tipped petals of roses

Whispering thoughts of the ******
Is this love?     Yes
Ropes tied tighter with a lustful hand
Bruises reaching inner soul
Soul of a single rose is dropped
As a loving plea is softly spoken
Fading voice immediately popped
Pleasure for the drugged mind

"Do it!" chuckles the blackening petals of roses

Slowing sands in the time-keep, felled
Sobering mind on drugged love
Unmedicated reality unveiled
Sorrowful hands loosen bands
Crows flurry in flight, startled
As sobs of hurt fight the drugs
worthless     blur is fading, unfurled
Bodies on the floor of pain
Shouts of anger as a soul slipped
Was it lust? Was it drugs?
Medicated hell was dipped
Too far? Too dark?
Breath of life gasps, forced

"Do it!" hisses the reddening petals of roses

Promises are made, real or hoaxed?
Liar
Was it life saved or life spared?
If promise of healing is true
Then life has been saved
But if the fallacy of the addicted
Proves to be too strong to resist
Then the sands will flow uncorrected
And the roses shall again fade to black.

life has plenty of bad dreams
realized and foretellable,
predictable, inevitable,
typos that go uncorrected
or cannot be corrected

but from time to time
magic appears in an email header,
mistakes intended
for what would life be without
the occasional,
surprise from him,
a Sirprise apprised....

and her, she, her,
knowing his mind
occupado by life's laundry,
sends him a notice of a
Herprize.
-----------------------------
To:            Him
From­ :      Her
Subject:    Herprize
Please hold the evening of April 25th on your calendar
for a Herprize event.  Tie and jacket will be required (too bad!).

To:            Her
From:       Him
Subject:    Sirprise

Tie and Jacket, no can do, as all my ties were accidentally
thrown out by some crotchety person on New Years Day, 2014.

Please mark the whole day, May 12th,
as busy on your calendar for a Sirprise event.
Casual formal (casual formal?) dress attire, please.
Popcorn and other refreshments will be provided.
Socks and **** stockings optional
but recommended for the evening portion of day's events
-----------------------------
the waitress inquires,
"theater tonight?"
She replies,
"oh yes, indeed,
an 8:00 curtain,"

"great, what show are you seeing?"
"that I cannot say, yet,
for it is a Herprize evening!"

the waitress says nothing,
but her smile indicates understood,
and they stupid grin at each other,
at their crazy ways and that the world
appreciates their typographical lives









.

The weight 

Atop her shoulders

Is enough to 

Curve her spine

And twist 

The corners 

Of her lips into a 

Sinking line

But in the view

Of distant eyes

She is no more 

Or less

Than posture 

Uncorrected

And vague
Unpleasantness.

Feast of the Epiphany

Grey days recede into dreary, drizzling dusks
Baptismal rains across the windows slip
And even the candlelight is not proof
Against the gathering gloom of heartfall

Shakespeare leans uncertainly on the shelf
And agonizes over his writer’s block
Milton is writing yet another tract
On faith while smoking Players cigarettes

Warnie and Jack are out for a brisk walk
And Tollers is busy correcting proofs
Under a yellow puddle of lamplight
Bleak Spenser in his grief Kilcolman weeps

We all hold castles abandoned and burnt
Friendships grown mouldy, squabbles unresolved
Walks not taken, rough drafts uncorrected
Pipes gone quite out, cups of tea gotten cold

Has it been that long since I saw you last?
Come in; I’ll put the kettle on for tea
Just leave your coat and brolly by the door
Come sit by the fire; come, and talk with me

Drifting sand as appetizer, curling
wave as prolonged planing, proof
of concept in vellum paper, swirling
words etched into soft membrane, remembering
instances of lucid terrors, abrupt
in constant seizing of May, moribund
fantasies spilled in ink across the plane, burn
cattle lost to famine and cholera, aged
gently such as indigenous softwoods, pulsing
light from illiterate sources, wrecks
the blind insistence on burrowing angels, lifts
skyward the misspoken words, uncorrected
and festering while you fret of etiquette, burned
to nothing but fragrant ash in syllables, dreaming
of white nights outlined in nostalgia, bearing
the trauma of several odd fathers, forgotten.

Do we ever recover
From the shame
Of that first essay
Thrown back,
Covered in red ink
With comments like,
'Spelling mistakes galore,
Writing unintelligible,
Question misunderstood,
Could have done better,
Should have been more?'

Or held up in class
For everyone to see
Read aloud
To a background
Of sniggering relief
As an example of how
Not to do it
And then, 'If this is
Your best, it beggars belief.'

They say some mistakes
Are accepted
Even invited as part
Of the process,
But going back
To when we first met
It seems so many
Have gone uncorrected
That you cannot forgive
Or forget.

A link to my past, one I try to forget
Not every link, but the ones I regret
Those I want are not that I get
I'm bounded by ones that keep me set

I wish to free myself from those I dislike
The ones the cringe and make my hair spike
The ones that curl my fist, like in a fight
But never the ones that make my soul light

The shadow that hovers my back and head
It second guesses every word that's been said
It chooses the links that make the thread
Picking and choosing to help itself spread

My choices feel pointless as if taken away
My agency useless, I can't see the way
My desire's to move, but I'm forced to stay
I can't see in the night, but it's never been day

I pretended the past just didn't exist
My mind kept checking some endless list
My mind never letting me the exit this mist
I feel like giving in, there's no way to resist

I've come to terms and it's something I accepted
I've stopped trying and left it uncorrected
I shunned myself, like I was infected
But this warmth and love has got me affected

The hill in my path is daunting and steep
When pressure's applied, my resolve is meek
I don't know if I have the nerve to leap
I'm told I'm strong but my mind claims weak

I'll treat this all like eating a whale
Bit by bit, from head to tail
There's an imploding feeling that I'll fail
But step by step, "Not today!" I'll wail